Luke, I definitely trust your judgement... cause i know you lay down the shred. I was just wondering if you have any tips or books to refer us to?

For all things chords and chord progressions , if you can find them..

Chord Camp 1
Chord Camp 2
Chord Camp 3

All by Tommy Armstrong, a local Sacramento teacher based out of Skips Music. These are seriously the best. As for scales, I still haven't found any that I've liked which is why I went to a teacher. Monster Scales and Modes by Dave Celentano was decent and fairly concise, not sure if its still on the shelf these days. For those chord books though I'd give Skips Music a call and see if you can order them, or email them and get in touch with Tom. A student of mine recently mentioned CC 3 was out of print.

But anyways, the Guitar Grimoire is a joke. The guy who wrote that thing obviously intended to make it look like the most complex, difficult and painful instrument on the planet when its really supposed to be fun.

Obviously each finger plays it's own fret (I=6, M=7, R=8, P=9), and it anchors off the pinky just to make it harder since that seems to be everyone's weak point. I came up with this like a year ago, it's a great warmup and has done wonders for my alternate picking. Not exactly a scale or chord though, haha...

The pattern is really obvious when you start to play it, once you get it under your fingers it's just the right hand that you need to concentrate on...

Probably the most overrated and terrible book I've seen on theory. Not surprised you would recommend it.

Thats a load of fucking bullshit, and you would only say it because you are a fuckin arrogant prick that has to have the ULTIMATE answer.

Its a great book for under $20.

How is a book that goes over all major modes plus about 20+ other scales showing them in all positions and keys in an easy to read format for under $20 a joke? Its not the end all to end all book, but its a great place to start.

Yeah playing guitar is fun, to bad fucking cheese dicks such as your self make it into a competition.

Monster Scales and Modes by Dave Celentano was decent and fairly concise, not sure if its still on the shelf these days...

Wow, I'm surprised to see someone else mentioning this book. I bought this book a long time ago. I thought it was decent at the time. It has pretty much all the regular known scales out there, plus tons of exotic scales.

The only thing I didn't like is that it only showed each scale drawn out on the fretboard in one key. So if you wanted to play the scale in a different key you either had to damn good with the scale and the ability to play it shifted up or down on the fretboard (which I was not and still am not) or you had to draw it out yourself on paper which is what I did. But the book would be probably 6 times thicker if all scales were drawn out in every key.

Sure man, there's some free ones here:-http://www.jimmyr.com/blog/Top_Free_...e_232_2006.php
'Ear Toner' seems the simplest one to use for single notes, some of the others get more technical.
Pretty boring compared to playing guitar, but quite helpful to improvisers when done for 5 minutes a day or something.